I’m having a problem when viewing collada file in different softwares. I have textured building polygon exported to collada from Microstation via Terraphoto. It should be quite rectangular but in some softwares like Autocad and GLC player it it looks very twisted, whereas in some programs is looks alright. What could cause such problem?

As near as I can tell no software really supports COLLADA. The Venn diagram of feature support is probably a very, very tiny slice. Like minimal COMMON profile and parts of the Core geometry section. The only reason to use it right now is if the idea of using a proprietary exchange format hurts to think about. And COLLADA wasn’t even made for that, but it’s still the best looking place to start.

The best support is probably based on OpenCOLLADA, and while Blender uses it, it does hardly so, and it’s been exiled from the main source files. OpenCOLLADA has sections of its library dedicated to Maya and 3DS Max, and I think an Ogre section or something. It should have a Blender one, but no one has bothered. Anything else probably goes back to when people thought COLLADA might be the next big thing. That didn’t last and nothing good came out of that period. The OpenCOLLADA library is not very good.

I think it’s dead. But there’s new interest created by a vacuum that is Autodesk consolidating everything 3-D and that there’s no non-commercial 3D file standard. It seems more realistic to resuscitate COLLADA than to invent something of whole-cloth and cross your fingers anyone notices. The new market for COLLADA I think is DIY culture and maybe academic. They want an exchange format more than anything. And that’s a tall order given how hugely complicated is is to implement a reliable/lossless XML utility. I’m surprised there’s any activity in this forum right now. Maybe users are emboldened by there actually being posts in here of late.

Without getting at least one half decent open reference implementation it seems like a bad idea to use COLLADA for anything. I hope in 2017 I can get the Blender coders to build COLLADA into Blender to the degree that is required to implement it correctly. (I need a non-commercial exchange format, and I’ve worked all year to rewrite the original COLLADA-DOM library.) Import/export doesn’t cut it for COLLADA. Even OpenCOLLADA is just import/export unless I am mistaken. So you could say that COLLADA is just an idea so far. I think people like the idea of it. It’s the default import/export option in Blender, even though it’s non-functional. 3-D is such a crap field. It always has been.

EDITED: One of the things that is misleading about COLLADA is how Khronos operates. It “writes” standards, and leaves it to the world to implement the damn things. So it will boast about it as if it’s real, even if no one has ever implemented it. It gives a false impression, that unfortunately creates a lot of false hope. Sometimes it works out more or less, and sometimes it doesn’t.

I’m not sure for this is right place to ask software and implementations specific questions, if I’m wrong please correct me
Most softwares, libraries… have their own bug tracker and maybe they even didn’t follow bugs reported here

FWIW: Blender has same issue, sometimes it exports transforms incorrectly, this bug may related to OpenCOLLADA I don’t know
but I think it will be fixed asap

Blender is open software and it is not bad idea to use open standars (COLLADA) for open software as default even it seems complicated
and I hope Khronos Group will continue support, improve the specs because I dont want it to be dead I’m still working on

I think the 2006 concept is dead, but it’s still the besthope, so eventually there will be a new push. I think there is renewed interest, but more from non-commercial sectors now. The commercial sector doesn’t care, and the 2006 version was for the commercial sector. It’s entire reason for existing was to avoid a proprietary cluster***. That problem seems to have sorted itself out by virtue of Autodesk buying up everything related to 3-D software! In fact, I think Mark Barnes told me that it’s Autodesk’s consolidation of everything over the ensuing middle decade that made COLLADA as envisioned a moot point. So, it’s only future (like I say) is for Autodesk haters.

I think there’s interest in a public standard, because in our imagination we want a “cyberspace” and we think of that as being like the WWW but 3-D. Imagine if the WWW was a proprietary network built on proprietary software! People would not have looked so friendly upon it. So in the same way, a “cyberspace” cannot be a proprietary space. It has to be public. And after it’s successful, then the commercial companies will move in on it. But it has to be public first or people won’t flock to it in the first place.